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Local Search Mystery

by 4hisway
12 replies
Greetings one and all,

Thanks for taking the time to check this out


I am interested in the "offline marketing" thing. Getting local businesses on Google's first page.

The one area I am struggling with is finding local keywords that have any search volume using Google Adwords. Anything using a town or county + the keyword comes back "not enough data"

Also I am using Market Samurai and nothing shows up there either.

How do you know people are searching these terms, such as...

Yourtown hair salon
Yourtown landscaping
Yourtown coffee shop... etc.

There can be the same town or county name in any number of states. So if there is a search number, it can be spread out quite a bit. Adding a state to it doesn't help.

So I was just trying to figure out if it is useful to use a local keyword phrase.

If I can answer this "yes", I can promote the "heck" out of it.

Thanks for your input, much appreciated.

Hope all is well with your campaigns.

Tom B.

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Junior Wealthy Affiliate

Posts: 267
Joined: Thu Dec 18, 2008 6:19 am
#local #mystery #search
  • Profile picture of the author Thomas
    Hi Tom,

    You could try using Adwords. If you have ads showing (in Google proper; not on their content network) for your desired keywords, you'll know pretty quick from the number of impressions they get.

    Regards,
    Tommy.

    P.S. - What's all this stuff?...

    Originally Posted by 4hisway View Post

    needHim
    Junior Wealthy Affiliate

    Posts: 267
    Joined: Thu Dec 18, 2008 6:19 am
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    • Profile picture of the author 4hisway
      Thanks Tommy for responding.

      Regarding your P.S. I'm a member of Wealthy Affiliate. Posted this question there late last night and copied it to here. Forgot to take out the stuff.

      I messed up with this sentence... The one area I am struggling with is finding local keywords that have any search volume using Google Adwords.

      I didn't mean to say Google Adwords. But am thinking of when people just do a search using local keyword phrases like the examples I used above. I can't find any data showing stats that people are using these terms other than this survey I read.

      Don't have enough posts to put the link in but it's called "The Great Divide" found at Webvisible.com

      Excellent promotional tool if your doing any kind of small business marketing.



      Hope I'm making some sense here

      Thanks,

      Tom B.
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        Tom, unless you are in a major metro area (LA, New York, etc.), local search terms aren't likely to generate the volume of searches necessary to show in many globally-oriented keyword tools.

        Then again, if you're trying to increase the clientele of a small hair salon in a suburban strip mall, you don't need a million searches a month. If you are going to work with real-world small businesses, you need to change your perspective from 'first page of Google' to 'more money in the till'.

        Here's an example. Mavis has a small salon - her and two full time stylists, with a couple of part-timers filling in for days off, etc. If each cut/style etc. averages 30 minutes, and the shop is open 100 hours per week, Mavis can comfortably handle 600 appointments per week (3 people x 2 cuts/hr x 100 hours). Anything over that, and Mavis either has to add capacity, which may be tough, or turn people away.

        If you land her on top for keywords that get 50,000 searches a month, and they convert well, you could put Mavis out of business because she can't handle the volume.

        Assuming that all available keywords are low volume, you can increase exposure by using zip codes, area codes and even telephone prefixes as keyword modifiers. I'm assuming you already know to include the various services your Mavis offers - haircut, tint, dye, style and set, etc.

        Hope this helps.
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        • Profile picture of the author Marty S
          Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

          Assuming that all available keywords are low volume, you can increase exposure by using zip codes, area codes and even telephone prefixes as keyword modifiers. I'm assuming you already know to include the various services your Mavis offers - haircut, tint, dye, style and set, etc.
          Thanks John. Can you elaborate on this more? I have never used these codes in KW research, so was wondering how you do it.
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          • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
            Originally Posted by Marty S View Post

            Thanks John. Can you elaborate on this more? I have never used these codes in KW research, so was wondering how you do it.
            Here's an example:

            Base keyword: hair tinting
            Location: Yourtown
            Zip code: 12345
            Area code: 666
            Local phone prefix: 555 (there will likely be more, based on the trading area)

            Your keyword list for this group becomes:

            hair tinting
            hair tinting Yourtown
            Yourtown hair tiniting
            hair tinting 12345
            12345 hair tinting
            666 hair tinting
            hair tinting 666
            666-555 hair tinting
            hair tinting 666-555

            and so on...

            You can also account for local geography. For example, in my part of Florida, a lot of the businesses are located along US 41, aka Tamiami Trail. If my client was located on that road, I would include those in my list of modifiers.

            You can make key phrases even further out on the long tail by adding in stop words line "near" "in" "by", ie "hair tinting near Yourtown"

            You can help a page rank for these terms by adding complete contact information in the page footer. I like to use something like:

            Mavis's Hair Salon
            123 Funny Street
            Yourtown, ST 12345

            666-555-1234

            Located on Buzzkill Road and Easy Street, across from Local Landmark (or other business)

            Added: None of these keywords or combinations may have enough volume to show up in a keyword tool. They are, however, the kind of terms people search for when they are looking for local services. Get enough of them right, and they'll add up to enough targeted visitors to add value to your clients.
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        • Profile picture of the author DaveLloyd
          Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

          Tom, unless you are in a major metro area (LA, New York, etc.), local search terms aren't likely to generate the volume of searches necessary to show in many globally-oriented keyword tools.
          I agree with what John says!

          Often in small towns and more rural areas, despite what everyone says, people still rely on yellow pages, local papers etc., to find the services they are looking for. They don't use the internet because they don't expect to find what they are looking for there.

          If you live in this sort of area and you do a search for 'mytown plumber' for example, you will probably just come up with several pages of classified advertising sites.

          Have you considered setting up a city/town portal where local businesses could advertise? If you built, and promoted such a site locally, it could become the online business focus for the whole area.

          Dave
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  • Profile picture of the author Ryan700
    Hi Tom,
    I'm not sure if it's even necessary. It seems like every time I do a Google search for something the adsense ads that show up on the first page are mostly businesses in my area. Maybe google serves up ads based on where my computer is. If you buy keywords from google (they might be cheap - i have no experience with adwords so I can't say) with your town or city in the keyword then maybe they might go to the top of the list for someone who is searching for a business in your area.

    Note: I just did a search for hair salons in my area. I have the free PPC Web Spy installed in my browser. Most of the ads were for salons in my area and some were for review sites for salons in my area. The top Adwords ad for a salon in my area has a cost of 58 cents to $1.84 for each click-through. They had no clicks - which equals no cost. But, if you look at the ad it included a phone number which meant people didn't need to click-through. There seems to be a technique here!
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
      Originally Posted by Ryan700 View Post

      Hi Tom,
      I'm not sure if it's even necessary. It seems like every time I do a Google search for something the adsense ads that show up on the first page are mostly businesses in my area. Maybe google serves up ads based on where my computer is. If you buy keywords from google (they might be cheap - i have no experience with adwords so I can't say) with your town or city in the keyword then maybe they might go to the top of the list for someone who is searching for a business in your area.

      Note: I just did a search for hair salons in my area. I have the free PPC Web Spy installed in my browser. Most of the ads were for salons in my area and some were for review sites for salons in my area. The top Adwords ad for a salon in my area has a cost of 58 cents to $1.84 for each click-through. They had no clicks - which equals no cost. But, if you look at the ad it included a phone number which meant people didn't need to click-through. There seems to be a technique here!
      When it comes to Adwords, Ryan is on to something.

      If you're going to go with pay per click, you may end up with two campaigns - one for generic terms and specific geography and one for local terms to pick up searchers outside the local area.

      The double campaign is good for tourist areas like Florida, with our snowbird population and vacation/tourist trade.
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  • Profile picture of the author GuerrillaIM
    If you set your geo location in webmaster tools and optimize the site right you will show up in the local results for everyone whose ip is close to the company.

    So people in ney york wouldnt hav to search "hair dresser new york" they would just search "hair dresser" and based on their ip location google would show them local results.
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